For “white plates” I propose to use Local settings.
Depending on my style of images (once again) I sometimes observe an overlap between shadow and black.
I’m setting the blacks to half the value in the opposite direction.
I propose here several methods of using PL.
Pascal
Selective tone on it’s own is realy global and overlapping each other.
If you use a test slide bloks from white to black you will notice that.
You get more control if you have filmpack.
Advanged contrast tool.
DxO has not a pure white slider.
Local adjustments and one of the control point/line is a better tool.
Here’s a vote for the current sliders. I much prefer them to the Lightroom sliders. In PhotoLab one can use the Selective Tone boldly as it’s not on too narrow a band, requiring four other adjustments for every touch on Highlights, Midtones, Shadows, Blacks.
As others have suggested, local adjustments are there for a reason. To work faster and target tighter, there’s always the Tone Curve which I used a lot in Photoshop to process RAW images pre-Aperture/Lightroom and continue to use now.
Complaints about the Selective Tone mainly come from Lightroom users who expect everything to work like Lightroom, just because that’s what they are used to. Again I find the Selective Tone in PhotoLab 5 far more useful than the Lightroom model as adjustments have an organic feel and usually look more natural than narrow bands.
For those who are into audio, the difference is between a parabolic equaliser and a graphic equaliser. The parabolic equaliser (PhotoLab 5 model) is considered a huge leap forward from the 5-band or 12-band graphic equaliser in terms of retaining the integrity of the sound, while allowing wide scope for adjustment.
When used in small amounts the selective tone controls can be an effective tool, however, the more you increase them it quickly becomes evident that there is too much overlap between them. For example, using more than small adjustments to the shadows slider has far too great an impact on mid-tones.
Mark
Kudos to @Pieloe @OXiDant and @uncoy and I agree completely. I was afraid that I was the only one that still liked the Selective Tone adjustments the way they are. Glad that I have some fellows.
The ST adjustments have been the way they are at least since OP8 which was my introduction to the world of DXO. In fact I learned how to adjust selected tones with OP8 and have continued to enjoy this process ever since.
It is not a quick process and it is an absolute necessity to have Filmpack 5 or 6 and access to the Advanced Contrast and Fine Contrast sliders for my process to work properly. I understand that if you have 100s or 1000s of photos that must be delivered under a deadline then you would not want use this process for each individual photo. However, if I want to create a “work of art”(in my mind at least) with an individual photo, this slow process is the only way to go IMO.
I have described my process in other threads on this same subject so will not repeat it here, but I will say again that using this slow process, I have never run into a properly exposed(no blown highlights) photo that I couldn’t recover highlights and shadows while keeping the midtones balanced using only the DXO software.
As has been mentioned already there is a way to adjust highlights or shadows without affecting midtones and that is to use Local Adjustments Control Lines(or Control Points) in conjunction with the Luma/Chroma selective sliders. Again this is a slow process, but very effective.
In conclusion, IMO there is no need to change the implementation of the ST sliders(just to please LR adherents) when they work so well as they are.
There are many comments on selective tone sliders in this forum. Searching for “selective tone” reveals a lot of mentions, comments, workarounds etc.
Use a step wedge image to see what the sliders do. Check these posts and others for details:
No need to repeat, simply add a link or two 
With this image you can test the effectiveness of each slider in selective tone:
Luminosity 255-0 in steps.tif (1,1 MB)
pure b&w.
and if you go to Free you will find lots of test images to see what and how the dxo tools work on images.
see the effects of selective tone the effect of advanged contrast and how luminance and chroma selectiveness works in an image.
Would DxOPL benefit from pure white slider/a set white point eyedropper? and a blacklevel slider/set blacklevel slider? Yes ánd no.
Yes because then you can stop using curvetone to set some low and high-key markers. just drop eyedropper and exposure adjust to that drop both and you set dynamic range/tonality.
No because it make you stop looking for relevant alternatives. Often small different adjustments creates a more natural look then one blunt one.
example:
highlight slider:
complete suppression of hightlight
And now your beloved whiteslider.
take a control line:
set up:
And in general.
we need to be careful to ask for more tools and adding more drawers in the cabinet.
the more drawers there are the less change you remember where you put the key in!
What we need is fine tune and extent a existing tool (drawer). cut off flaws and misbehave and build better controls.
our control is good:
selective tone and contrast : Global set up tonality/contrast/details in parts but fluid.
Tone curve: same but more hars and more edgy.
local adjustment: the paintbrushes to touch up area’s or protect area’s (you can use it to counter effect global adjustments.)
What we need is better view of what’s effecting what. connection of knobs and view of effect .
stacking contrast and such effects a image. So a histogram which holds a tonecurve line inside which shows the combined contrast changes would help a lot.
could you provide links ?
Thanx.
Why working existing way should be replaced by a new one ?
Why couldn’t be a second way added (maybe with a toggle if they are not compatible).
It is really true that for some images it is too much long to do some kind of recovery which works really well in other softwares (and not LR alone).
Better to add features than to loose features.
Thanks for that article. I’ll save it and try it later.
Are there tutorials for Tone Curve and Local Adjustments? I’ve never used either one of those features.
You can add me to that list too, Mark …
John M
Thanks John. @John-M is now added to the list.
@platypus and @JoPoV I don’t remember the titles of those old threads from a couple of years ago, but I will attempt to find them with a search.
You can add me too to the list of those who absolutly don’t want to loose current photolab behavior.
I used to recover highlights I couldn’t with other softwares with it.
But to the list too of those who would like to have possiblity to choose an other way sometime.
Yes, I would be amenable to adding a new option to make the sliders work like LR, provided that this will be an option and for those of us who like the sliders the way they are, are free to ignore this option.
A sensibility slider.
Pascal
There are a lot more, but here are two posts that I found that describe the basics of my procedure and my passion about this subject. I’ll continue looking.
and in the same thread:
I think this is the main weakness and complaint. If they can add a narrow width “whites” slider that works kind of like the blacks slider and is tuned for highlight recovery I think it would solve a lot of the concerns.
They can leave the highlights slider as it is which satisfies existing users and existing edits from previous versions.
What exactly do you want a “whites” slider to do?
If it is just to reduce the white level in the brightest highlights, then you can just take a nibble out of the tone curve. You can either take the whole curve down subtly so that there is still a difference between what was pure white and the next tone down…
… or you can make the brightest part the same level as its neighbour…
